The Best Man. Grace Livingston Hill
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and tried to fling him off, but the poor creature pulled back and clung to the platform yelping piteously.
Just then the conductor came from the other car and looked at him curiously.
“No dogs allowed in these cars,” he said gruffly.
“Well, if you know how to enforce that rule I wish you would,” said Gordon. “I’m sure I don’t know what to do with him.”
“Where has he been since you left Washington?” asked the grim conductor with suspicion in his eyes.
“I certainly haven’t had him secreted about me, a dog of that size,” remarked the young man dryly. “Besides, he isn’t my dog. I never saw him before till he followed me at the station. I’m as anxious to be rid of him as is to stay.”
The conductor eyed the young man keenly, and then allowed a grim sense of humor to appear in one corner of his mouth.
“Got a chain or a rope for him?” he asked more sympathetically.
“Well, no,” remarked the unhappy attaché of the dog. “Not having had an appointment with the dog I didn’t provide myself with a lease for him.”
“Take him into the baggage car,” said the conductor briefly, and slammed his way into the next car.
There seemed nothing else to be done, but it was most annoying to be thus forced on the notice of his fellow-travellers, when his commission required that he be as inconspicuous as possible.
At Jersey City he hope to escape and leave the dog to the tender mercies of the baggage man, but the official was craftily waiting for him and handed the animal over to his unwilling master with a satisfaction ill-proportioned to the fee he had received for caring for him.
Then began a series of misfortunes. Disappointment and suspicion stalked beside him, and behind him a voice continually whispered his chief’s last injunction: “Don’t let anything hinder you!”
Frantically he tried first one place and then another, but all to no effect. Nobody apparently wanted to care for a stray white dog, and his very haste aroused suspicion. Once he came near being arrested as a dog thief. He could not get rid of that dog! Yet he must not let him follow him! Would he have to have the animal sent home to Washington as the only solution of the problem? Then a queer fancy seized him that just in such way had Miss Julia Bentley been shadowing his days for nearly three years now; and he had actually this very day been considering calmly whether he might not have to marry her just because she was so persistent in her taking possession of him. Not that she was unladylike, of course; no, indeed! She was stately and beautiful, and had never offended. But she had always quietly, persistently, taken it for granted that he would be her attendant whenever she chose; and she always chose whenever he was in the least inclined to enjoy any other woman’s company.
He frowned at himself. Was there something weak about his character that a woman or a dog could so easily master him? Would any other employee in the office, once trusted with his great commission, have allowed it to be hindered by a dog?
Gordon could not afford to waste any more time. He must get rid of him at once!
The express office would not take a dog without a collar and chain unless he was crated; and the delays and exasperating hindrances seemed to be interminable. But at last, following the advice of a kindly officer, he took the dog to an institution in New York where, he was told, dogs were boarded and cared for, and when he finally disposed of him, having first paid ten dollars for the privilege. As he settled back in a taxicab with his watch in his hand, he congratulated himself that he had still ample time to reach his hotel and get into evening dress before he must present himself for his work.
Within three blocks of the hotel the cab came to such a sudden standstill that Gordon was thrown to his knees.
CHAPTER II
They were surrounded immediately by a crowd in which policemen were a prominent feature. The chauffeur seemed dazed in the hands of the officers.
A little, barefoot, white-faced figure huddled limply in the midst showed Gordon what had happened: also there were menacing glances toward himself and a show of lifted stares. He heard one boy say: “You bet he’s in a hurry to git away. Them kind allus is. They don’t care who they kills, they don’t!”
A great horror seized him. The cab had run over a newsboy and perhaps killed him. Yet instantly came the remembrance of his commission: “Don’t let anything hinder you. Make it a matter of life and death!” Well, it looked as if this was a matter of death that hindered him now.
They bundled the moaning boy into the taxicab and as Gordon saw no escape through the tightly packed crowd, who eyed him suspiciously, he climbed in beside the grimy little scrap of unconscious humanity, and they were off to the hospital to the tune of “Don’t let anything hinder you! Don’t let anything hinder you!” until Gordon felt that if it did not stop soon he would go crazy. He meditated opening the cab door and making his escape in spite of the speed they were making, but a vision of broken legs and a bed in the hospital for himself held him to his seat. One of the policemen had climbed on in front with the chauffeur, and now and again he glanced back as if he were conveying a couple of prisoners to jail. It was vexatious beyond anything! And all on account of that white dog! Could anything be more ridiculous than the whole performance?
His annoyance and irritation almost made him forget that it was his progress through the streets that had silence this mite beside him. But just as he looked at his watch for the fifth time the boy opened his eye and moaned, and there was in those eyes a striking resemblance to the look in the eyes of the dog of whose presence he had put just rid himself.
Gordon started. In spite of himself it seemed as if the dog were reproaching him through the eyes of the child. Then suddenly the boy spoke.
“Will you stay by me till I’m mended?” whispered the weak little voice.
Gordon’s heart leaped in horror again, and it came to him that he was being tried out this day to see if had the right stuff in him for hard tasks. The appeal in the little street-boy’s eyes reached him as no request had ever yet done, and yet he might not answer it. Duty, - life and death duty, - called him elsewhere, and he must leave the little fellow whom he had been the involuntary cause of injuring, to suffer and perhaps to die. It cut him to the quick not to respond to that urgent appeal.
Was it because he was weary that he was visited just then by a vision of Julia Bentley with her handsome lips curled scornfully? Julia Bentley would not have approved of his stopping to carry a boy to the hospital, any more than to care for a dog’s comfort.
“Look here, kiddie,” he said gently, leaning over the child, “I’d stay by you if I could, but I’ve already made myself later for an appointment by coming so far with you. Do you know what Duty is?”
The child nodded sorrowfully.
“Don’t yous mind me,” he murmured weakly. “Just yous go. I’m game all right.” Then the voice trailed off into silence again, and the eyelids fluttered down upon the little, grimy, unconscious face.
Gordon went into the hospital for a brief moment to leave some money in the hands of the authorities for the benefit of the boy, and a message that he would return in a week or two if possible; then hurried away.
Back in the cab once more, he felt as if he had killed a man and left him lying by the roadside while he continue his unswerving march toward the hideous duty which was growing increasingly more portentous, and to be relieved of which he would gladly have surrendered further hope of his chief’s favor. He closed his eyes and tried to think, but all the time the little white face of the child came before his vision, and the mocking eyes of Julia Bentley tantalized him, as if she were telling him that he had spoiled all his chances – and hers – by his foolish soft-heartedness. Though, what else could he have done than he had